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Career transitioning 101

In the process of writing about being a single parent going through the "empty nest" process, I started to realize how much more transition is happening since my son Ky started college in Fall 2013. I realized that on some level I must have been waiting until the in-house-parent part of my life morphed into the empty-nest-parent stage before admitting to myself that the career I'd worked so hard for since Ky was born was no longer the career that would sustain me through retirement.

--> I'm very, very far from being an expert in empty nesting or in career transitions. I'm figuring these things out in real-time.

However I'm goal oriented and hard working and not afraid to take a lot of chances, so I have been making a lot of successful and completely unsuccessful moves during the process. I think making mistakes and following blind alleys can give us as much (or more?) information than our success stories, so I'll share the faceplants as they happen.

Here are some of my own thoughts and experiences with career transition during the empty nesting transition.

I've found that using the transition of seeing your child go off to college as an incentive to make some other sweeping changes in your life can be great, and also incredibly hard.

Obviously changing your career without a financial plan during the college-parent years would be foolish, BUT....

... the career transition process can take a few years, and you can definitely do the groundwork for it while maintaining your present career, paycheck and benefits. It just takes a lot of energy after-hours.

If you're interested in reading about the steps I took to hire a career coach (which was a great decision for me):